Johnnie Clark Sr., 72, Oakland

Pastor Johnnie Clark Sr.’s doctor said it wasn’t a good idea to take a trip to New Orleans — the virus was spreading around the U.S., and the 72yearold had health problems — but he went anyway. He didn’t want to miss his mother’s 95th birthday.

He was feeling a little sick shortly after arriving, but chalked it up to a minor cold, his diabetes, his heart condition. A few days after he returned home, he realized he could barely breathe, so his wife, Sylvia, called an ambulance. Once he got to the hospital, he faintly heard the doctors talking about the virus — and for a few minutes, his mind spun.

“I even thought about committing suicide,” said Clark, a minister at Word Assembly Church in Oakland, as he recounted his days of having to lie upside down on a rotating bed, not knowing when the pain would end or what would happen to him. He was eventually induced into a coma and put on a ventilator.

Most of his family had gotten sick as well, though to varying degrees. His mother was hospitalized, and his brother and two sisters fell ill. Though his wife hadn’t gone on the trip, she dealt with the sickness alone at home. After 12 days on the ventilator, the family took a leap of faith; he was taken off the ventilator and they waited to see if he would breathe on his own.

Wilson, who talked to the doctors every day, kept reminding them her father was no ordinary man. He had gone through drug addiction — which brought him to preaching, heartvalve surgery in 1995 and Hurricane Katrina. Losing everything in that tragedy had brought them to the Bay Area in 2005.

Clark said he remembered a promise he made to the Lord: that if he could see his house again, the first thing he would do would be to get on his knees in front of it and thank him. On April 30, as he struggled to hold on to his walker, he knelt down and fulfilled his end of the promise. Even a month after, it’s still hard to walk in the same way, sometimes it’s hard to breathe. But he is home.